A lighting system may include multiple devices such as lamps, sensors and switches. Each of these devices may be independently obtained and connected to a control system via wired or wireless connections. The control system can provide preprogrammed timers, sensors, and/or control that can help reduce operational costs by ensuring that the correct level of lighting is provided at the appropriate times. Each of the individual and discrete components of a lighting system are typically installed in accordance with a detailed floor plan, which may be provided in the form of construction drawings, e.g., AutoCAD drawings. The lighting systems may be used in both commercial and domestic settings, but are typically installed in large commercial buildings. The floor plans typically specify each device type, its position, and its connection (wired or wireless) to the control system.
In order for the control system to correctly control each of the components of the lighting system, a unique identifier for each lighting fixture (e.g., a bar code, a MAC address, etc.) of the lighting fixture needs to be correlated to the spatial location of the lighting fixture within the floor plan. This process is typically performed after all of the lighting fixtures are installed at their desired locations and performed by a skilled lighting commissioning engineer. The mapping of the each lighting fixture, along with its unique identifier, to the proper spatial location within a floor plan can be performed manually. It typically requires a lighting engineer to manually inspect each individual lighting fixture and manually record data on a printout of a floor plan or input data to an electronic version of the floor plan via a graphical interface. The manually entered data may be inputted or transferred to a fixture database that may associate each recorded identifier with a spatial location shown in the floor plan. Alternatively, a test signal may be used to cycle the power level of each light in turn. An installer or a similar specialist then walks around until the activated light is identified and matched to a spatial location within the floor plan. This process is repeated sequentially for each lighting fixture until all fixtures are correlated to a spatial location within the floor plan. After the lighting fixtures have been commissioned, the control system may provide any number of suitable instructions or configuration parameters to the lighting fixtures to control the operation of the lighting fixtures. For example, the instructions and/or configuration parameters may be provided in the form of a software program that can be uploaded to a memory located within each of the lighting fixtures for further execution.
There are many disadvantages to manually mapping lighting fixtures to spatial locations. For example, the manual commissioning process is time-consuming and can interfere with the ability of other contractors on a building site to proceed with their work. To further complicate the process, building contractors often do not follow the precise lighting layout specified in the floor plan. Therefore, in order to commission the lighting after the lights have been installed, a highly skilled commissioning engineering is needed to conduct manual commissioning, which can be costly. For a large lighting installation, the commission often involves tens or hundreds of lighting fixtures that need to be correlated to their correct spatial locations so that they can be operated appropriately together. This is an arduous and expensive task that can be time consuming and raise the overall installation cost, particularly for large and/or complex lighting installations. Manual commissioning is not only time consuming and costly, but also prone to errors, such as, for example, data input mistakes. Such commissioning errors may lead a control system to send commands to the wrong fixture, or commands that appear to have no effect. During the commissioning of a large installation, the errors may be further amplified.
Computerized methods for commissioning lighting fixtures have been previously describe. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,159,156 (“the '156 patent”) describes a lighting system for areal illumination having a remote driver and plurality of fixtures including luminaries, control devices, and/or standalone sensors. The '156 patent describes a method of commissioning a lighting system that measures a signal emitted from a signal source to determine relative distance measurements between two fixtures. To identify the spatial location of the fixtures, the '156 patent relies on a triangulation method, which maps each fixture individually and requires at least three references nodes.
As another example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2013/0221203 (“the '203 publication”) describes systems and methods for spatial commissioning of a lighting system. The systems may include directional sensors, directional emitter devices and an auto-commissioning module. The auto-commissioning module may receive the direction of the light signal detected by the directional sensors and generate a sensor graph based on the direction of the light signal that is detected by the directional sensors. The auto-commissioning module may map each one of the directional sensors or emitter devices to a corresponding location in a site model based on the sensor graph and on the site model.
Although computerized methods have been used in the commissioning of lighting fixtures, the accuracy of such computerized methods may be subject to lighting topology, layout complexity, signal interference, daylighting and/or other environment parameters. In particular, computerized commissioning methods may not be capable of identifying a single correct mapping of the lighting fixtures, when the lights are arranged in a symmetrical layout. For example, the lights may be arranged in a square layout so that there may be four possible mappings of lighting fixtures to spatial locations, a first arrangement and alternative arrangements that are rotated by 90, 180 or 270 degrees. The computerized methods may not be capable of resolving which one of the four possible mappings for the square layout is the correct match without manual intervention. Such manual intervention requires turning on a lighting fixture and manually entering its spatial location and/or manually assessing if the activated lighting fixture is mapped to the correct location. These types of manual intervention require repeat trial-and-error tests, which is a labor-intensive process, and becomes increasingly difficult for larger lighting system layouts.
Therefore, there is a continuing need in the art for an improved lighting system and method for commissioning lighting. It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved system and method for mapping a plurality of lighting fixtures to a plurality of spatial locations that can identify a correct mapping in all types of layouts, including a symmetrical and/or complex layout.